We met her in the middle of the hall, half way between the dais and the door. As we approached, I observed a slender golden chain attached to the cross she was holding. She handed this to Marcus, then lowered her head as he placed both chain and cross around her neck. Then she passed him the bowl and he raised it to his lips and drank from it. When he looked up it was as if a shining jewel had been fastened to his brow. His already noble face was lit with a new and princely light. Marcus gave the bowl to me and I drank too, then passed it to the companion on my left, whose name was Adam, a portly gent with white hair and tweeds, whom I yet remembered as a mighty force of nature at the beginning of the world, a titan of ice and fire who fashioned the poles with his bare hands and fixed the extremities of heat and cold from North to South and East to West.
The drink was cool and invigorating, and laced, I felt, with a secret, subtle power. My mind felt clear and my body sharp and alert. The woman in red and gold was standing in front of me, the bowl back in her hand. She had such a compelling presence that it was hard to look elsewhere, but my eyes, nonetheless, were drawn more to the picture of the purple staircase behind her on the wall. I felt like Edmund and Lucy at the start of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader when the painting of the ship comes alive and they see the sails billowing and feel the wind and spray on their cheeks. I had no idea why or how but it seemed that the purple stairs were standing out somehow from their golden backdrop and inviting us to take the first step up.
So when the woman said, 'Come, let us ascend to the top of the tower,' it came as no surprise. She led us to a corner of the hall, to an alcove beside the dais and a plain wooden door which she opened with her foot, not even breaking stride. A stone staircase swept upwards before us, curving around from right to left. We followed in her wake and started to climb.
The stairs were surprisingly broad, and we were able to walk two or three abreast. It was, however, rather dim. What light there was seemed like a blend of the torches in the hall below and the moon and stars above. There were little slits of windows every twenty paces or so and I paused at the third one and looked out at the poplar trees waving in the breeze. Beyond them, on the other side of the disused railway, I could see the brick façade of the laundry and the corrugated gleam of the old air raid shelters.
I became convinced, as I resumed my climb, that I had called the tower into being, albeit unwittingly, through my contemplation of the purple stairs. I was sure I hadn't seen a tower when I'd stood up on my pedals before to look at the transformed ruins, though admittedly the light had been weak and there were lots of trees about. And what, I asked myself, if my eyes had focused on another image - the eagle, for instance, or the book? Would that have become the focal point for the adventure instead? I recalled Malebron's remark to Roland in Alan Garner's Elidor on the power of the imagination: 'What appears only fleetingly in your world is here as real as swords.'
The staircase, I noticed, was starting to feel brighter, as if it had its own source of light after all. Then, as we turned a corner onto small, square landing - more like a platform really - we saw where it was coming from and we stood stock still before it, spellbound and amazed. It was a door, thick and sturdy and carved from the same grey stone as the slabs surrounding it. A round, iron handle tempted me momentarily, but deep down I felt neither the need nor desire to go inside. The same could be said for all of us, I think. It was enough to stand outside and let the silver light that streamed out from the gaps between the door and walls work its magic on our hearts and minds.
I say 'silver' because that's the closest approximation I can find, but in reality it was like no other colour I've seen before or since. No words can do it justice. It was like the sun and moon and stars all rolled into one. That silver fire brought me so much peace and joy - as if the Holy Spirit was holding and caressing me - that I have searched for it ever since, in all the wrong places usually, and will remain forever restless until I meet it face to face again.
There was a smell as well, a mingled scent of daffodils and incense. I heard bells and voices too - a high angelic chant - the same song we had sung around the blessed throne before the dawn of time. Then Marcus spoke, cutting through the rapture and bringing me back to the ground beneath my feet and the round solidity of the tower. 'Friends,' he said, 'the time will come again, when this work is done, to enter in and sing once more the liturgy God gave us long ago, the Solemn Mass that brings the Dark Age to a close and baptises the returning Golden Age. But that is for the future. Tonight we have our mission to receive. Let us climb higher and hear the story Dindrane has returned to tell us.'
I don't know how long after that it took us to reach the top. I had lost all track of time to be honest. But when we got there the woman Marcus had called Dindrane was waiting for us, as tall and straight as a spear-shaft against the scudding clouds and sparkling stars of Orion's Belt. To her right, above the trees and beyond the railway and my house and street, loomed the Byzantine-style dome of St. Andrew's RC church. To her left, past the bowling green and the hedge and across Wilmslow Road, the spire of the Anglican Shrine of King Charles the Martyr pointed up to the quarter-full moon. And it seemed auspicious to me that we should be standing on this mysterious turret - this thin place, this place both in and out of time - exactly midway between these two great symbols of local Christianity.
The bronze bowl each of us had drank from in the hall stood perched between two battlements on Dindrane's right. She picked it up and drank from it, and the cross on her chest appeared to glow with a fiercer, more insistent light. She put the bowl back and I saw in her eyes, like summer lightning , the same silver, Pentecostal fire that had given us its blessing on the parapet below. Then she started to speak ...
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